Of course Alphazero is stunning achievement! But so far not better than Stockfish only alternative approach. BTW in 22 move loss game A0 is already lost after 12.-Nb6 based my short analysis. May be 12. -Nf8 can still save game?

Do you think the developers of LC0 can get the binaries used by the team of A0?
They only try to develop an NN based chess engine from the rather incomplete information made public
about A0 by the team of A0.
They are working hard and well and to now the chess power of LC0 comes near to A0.
A lot of thanks to the team of LC0 and their voluntary helpers!
I think maybe the results of the developers of LC0 forces the team of A0 to come to public more information about A0.

But I am curious if using A/B search instead of MCTS was ever seriously tested? The rationale in the paper for using MCTS does not seem very strong. It is claimed that NN's make larger errors than traditional heuristic evaluation functions and that in A/B search such errors are propagated to the root. But heuristic evaluation functions also make large errors and A/B engines seem to be just fine with them (the search somehow seems to work around such errors).

Ideas=science. Simplification=engineering.
Without ideas there is nothing to simplify.

Do you think the developers of LC0 can get the binaries used by the team of A0?

Unless Google's production systems have changed a lot since I worked there a few years ago, it's highly unlikely you'll be able to take production binaries built inside Google and get them to run on a regular install. There's just so much from the production environment (Borg, Chubby, etc.) that you don't have on the outside. Similarly, there would be so many Google-specific libraries linked in there that giving out binaries would just be out of the question from a confidentiality perspective.

Google open-sources a lot of stuff, generally by untangling it from Google3 and packaging it up into something more standard for the outside. You'll have to hope for that

Do you think the developers of LC0 can get the binaries used by the team of A0?

Unless Google's production systems have changed a lot since I worked there a few years ago, it's highly unlikely you'll be able to take production binaries built inside Google and get them to run on a regular install. There's just so much from the production environment (Borg, Chubby, etc.) that you don't have on the outside. Similarly, there would be so many Google-specific libraries linked in there that giving out binaries would just be out of the question from a confidentiality perspective.

Google open-sources a lot of stuff, generally by untangling it from Google3 and packaging it up into something more standard for the outside. You'll have to hope for that

When he asked for the binaries I guess he probably asked for NN. Since format is well known, there is absolutely no reason why would they wouldn't share it if they are really so devoted to open-source and sharing knowledge. But of course they are never gonna do it, because one could actually run those NNs and realize they are not nearly as strong as they suggest in the publication...

Do you think the developers of LC0 can get the binaries used by the team of A0?

Google open-sources a lot of stuff, generally by untangling it from Google3 and packaging it up into something more standard for the outside. You'll have to hope for that

When he asked for the binaries I guess he probably asked for NN. Since format is well known, there is absolutely no reason why would they wouldn't share it if they are really so devoted to open-source and sharing knowledge.

Yes, the very easy & best thing is for them to release the NN TensorFlow SavedModel. No untangling & packaging needed.
If they do that, it's then the public's job to put in the work & make good use of it.

Last edited by jp on Sat Dec 08, 2018 11:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.